With a Gentle Unknown Woe
by ambiguously
Summary: Finn captured his mortal enemy by luck. Now he has to figure out what to do with him.


Finn ought to kill him.

He doesn't even know what to call him. Rey and the General refer to him as "Ben." Poe calls him "that bastard." Rose just makes an annoyed "Ugh" and doesn't say his name at all. Finn used to have to call him "Sir" and he is never, ever doing that again. Kylo, or whatever his name is, sleeps fitfully on the ground, twitching in his dreams, and Finn knows his best plan is to kill him now before he wakes up.

He won't. He knows already that he won't. The first thing he refused to do was to kill those unarmed villagers, and he won't kill someone helpless now.

He does recheck the deceptively thin collar locked on Kylo's neck. It's a nasty little device that blocks the Force. The General got it from someone she called an old friend, and she's got enough old friends holed up in enough corners of the galaxy that Finn can only guess who or how they came across it in the first place. With the collar in place, Kylo can't summon the powers he's relied on, and with his hands and feet securely bound, he's not getting free.

Finn can't even pretend he caught the guy in a fair fight. One minute, the ship he's still learning to pilot is getting blasted by a TIE from out of nowhere, and the next, he's crash-landed on a planet with his unconscious ex-boss. He only has the collar with him because it gives Rey headaches when she's around it too long.

He hopes Kylo's headache is awful.

Wary and exhausted, Finn tries not to sleep. His own head aches. If he's got a concussion, sleeping may kill him. But he's so tired.

His eyes blink open. For a moment he can't remember where he is or why his muscles are so stiff. Then he sees the bound man, who has managed to move himself into a sitting position.

"It's about time you woke up." Kylo stares at him. "You will unbind me now."

Finn yawns. Kylo was never very good at the weird mind thing. Even when Finn was still a stormtrooper, still terrified at the masked creature doling out the will of the Supreme Leader, Kylo's attempts at mental control over the other stormtroopers had all been met with befuddled confusion. Now he's stuck, and he can't do anything about it.

"No, I don't think I will." Finn gets up, retrieves his survival pack from where he stowed it, and pulls out some food. Protein paste. Gross, but edible. He takes two. He's about to toss one to his prisoner when the obvious hits him. "I'll feed you in a minute." He squeezes the tube of paste into his mouth, swallowing it down with a slug of water from his stores. The taste has not improved since the last time he tried some. He grabs the second tube and walks close to Kylo. "Open up."

Kylo gives him a disgusted glare and closes his mouth tightly.

Finn waves the protein tube in front of his face, then tosses it with a quick throw back towards his pack. Luckily, it falls in instead of smacking against the side and hitting the ground as he was sure it would. "Fine. Starve."

"I'll eat after I've killed you."

"Not going to happen. Your new necklace there keeps you from doing any Force stuff. You're tied up in perfect First Order fashion. You're not going anywhere, and you're not killing anybody."

He hopes, oh he hopes, that Kylo will try his bonds. Finn learned from the best, or worst if he thought about it. Sometimes they took prisoners, if the prisoners were more interesting to torture than to kill. His current prisoner doesn't try. He would have tried before Finn woke up.

"I sent out a distress call. The Resistance should pick it up and come to get us soon. You just sit tight and wait."

"They won't arrive in time. I'll have escaped your pathetic trap, rid the galaxy of you, and returned to my ship."

"That piece of junk over there?" Finn jerks his thumb at the wreck.

"You remember the _Dominance_."

He does. Most of the stormtroopers do a rotation on that ship, getting the last of their personalities drilled out of them, in a few cases with real drills. Finn survived by keeping his head down and following orders, and he kept that up until his head and his heart had a long talk.

"You made that your flagship? You're crazier than I thought."

A flinch rolls under Kylo's skin, not quite making it to his face. The stormtroopers all said to one another that he was a loose blaster, and the Supreme Leader would have him jettisoned one day for shooting out at the wrong time. Finn is sad they were wrong. The loose blaster shot the Supreme Leader instead and took his place.

He crouches down, eye to eye with the madman. "I could end the war right now. One bolt through your skull, and no more Supreme Leader." He raises his own blaster, aiming it and miming a shot. "You grabbed the power at the top the last time there was a vacuum. Without you, the whole First Order leadership will backstab each other to take your place. You know it. I know it."

"Then shoot."

He almost does. Finn, the hero of This Cruddy Planet's Name Here. They'll sing songs about it, like they do about Endor and Jakku and Yavin. He'll get a medal.

He lowers the blaster.

"Frightened?" Kylo smirks at him. He's goading Finn.

The crouch aches his back and knees. He sits. "Any particular reason you're trying to talk me into killing you?"

That earns him a flicker of expression he wasn't expecting. He's dug up something. He's not sure what.

"Why was the Supreme Leader out flying his own TIE to chase down one Resistance ship? You've got a whole fleet."

"I'm the best pilot in my fleet." Pure ego shines through, but he's probably right.

"Now you're just another prisoner of war. Which is why I'm not killing you. We don't shoot prisoners."

"That's why you've been losing."

Finn folds his arms. "The overwhelming odds and lack of funding or support from anyone is why we're having trouble."

"You had plenty of support when you were one of us."

"No."

He wants to say so much more. He wants to talk about how the First Order chews up their own people and spits them in the bogs. He wants to shout about dead villagers and whole planets reduced to rubble. Instead he watches Kylo Ren and understands that he knows it too. He can see the rot all around himself, and he knows every victory is temporary. Finn's not sure how he knows what Kylo is thinking, but he's positive.

His commlink beeps. With more relief than he wants to say, Finn answers it. The voice on the other end isn't anyone he knows, but it's the Resistance, and they're on their way. They'll be here in about ten hours.

"It would be cleaner to shoot me now." There's that half-hope again. It's weird, but Kylo Ren has always been the King of the Weirdos.

"I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to take you back, and you're going to get a fair trial."

"So you can feel better when someone else executes me?"

"If I was sitting there, you would execute me on the spot. You've tried."

"You betrayed me!"

It's the personal hurt that finally demands Finn's attention. Another thing the stormtroopers all knew: sometimes the higher command would don white uniforms, and they would mingle with the troops during leisure periods. Talking to them. Playing cards with them. Sleeping with them. Stealing away again when they were finished. Stormtroopers had to wear their helmets at all times. There was no way to be sure. Part of him has always wondered, and a secret part of him has always known.

Finn can't be sure now. Three years and a whole lifetime ago, he met up four times or so for some mindless fun with faceless strangers from other squads. They weren't even allowed to kiss, huddled into the borrowed cubicles together. A few did, or bragged they did. Finn only lifted his helmet enough to expose his mouth, not to press his lips against a lover, but to angle his jaw open, repress his own gag reflex, and swallow deep. He remembers being nervous, and wanting to see the eyes of the person he was with, watch them watching him. That's why he stopped going. He remembers thinking, or pretending to himself, that it was the same person each time he went, the same guy who tipped his own helmet up the second time Finn walked into the anonymous cubicle with someone he didn't know, couldn't see, could only feel as a hot, wet, mouth sucked him until his ears popped.

Now he's sure.

"How did you know it was me?"

Kylo gives him a look Finn is used to from him, like Finn is some foolish kid. "You were still you with a mask on." His expression changes, and Finn can't read what's in it. "I always knew which one you were. I could feel it. You're always you."

Neither of them are wearing masks now. "I'm somebody else now," Finn says with more confidence than he feels. "You should try it."

"I did." He's not looking at Finn now. 'Kylo Ren' was this guy's attempt at being someone else, someone new.

Finn ignores him, and goes back to his pack. They'll be rescued in a while. He can do without spending all ten hours reminiscing about the bad old days. There's not much with him to distract himself. He hasn't anything to read except the beat-up manual for his broken ship. He turns his head towards Kylo's wrecked ship.

"Stay put," he says, and crawls into the TIE. There's enough power to light the console. He loads the ship's computer information onto a datacube for later. It's a little more intel for the Resistance, a little more help for the cause. He has a cause now.

"There's nothing useful in the navicomputer," Kylo tells him. He can't be reading Finn's mind. Finn is sure of that. The comment still catches him off-guard.

"Maybe, maybe not." The datacube goes into his pack. He sees the protein paste again. "You should eat."

"Untie me."

"Not gonna happen." He picks up the tube, carrying it back over. He remembers the strange, uncomfortable touching they were allowed, the thrill of seeing someone's glove peel off his hand, pulling off the uniform pants enough to touch and feel, or to kneel. "Open up," he says, and for a second, just one second, he wants to untuck himself, wants Kylo on his knees with his lips parted, looking into Finn's eyes this time. He can grab Kylo by his hair and fuck his mouth until he gags, and Kylo can't stop him.

But Finn was never that person, and he's not going to start being that person now. General Organa has told all of them that nobody is born to be a certain person. They're all no more and no less than the sum of the choices they make, good and bad and ill-considered and selfless and messy and hopeless. Finn chooses to feed the paste to his captive.

Kylo mutters and grumbles, reluctantly opening his lips for Finn to place the end of the tube into his mouth and slowly squeeze out bite-sized portions. It takes a while, and Finn's hand cramps up by the end.

"You eat this on purpose?" Kylo asks when he's done. There's a bit of pale paste at the side of his mouth and on his chin. Finn tries not to look, tries not to think that it looks like he's left a dribble of something else on Kylo's face.

"It's food."

"We have better back where you came from."

"Everything tastes better when you're free." It's trite and untrue but saying the words makes him feel better.

The mess bothers him. Finn wipes Kylo's face with his own sleeve like he's a little kid.

They sit back, not exactly watching each other, not exactly looking away. Finn breaks first, pulling out the holocube to see if he can find anything interesting. He reads through nav charts, basic orders, and there, hidden inside both, he finds what he didn't know he's been looking for. The navicomputer has the location of all the First Order deployments in this part of the galaxy, the easier for their TIEs to get back to a base. That information is worth its weight in rare metals.

"I know what you're thinking," Kylo says.

"You don't. Your brain magic doesn't work right now."

"You found the star maps of our fleet. You think you can use that to help the Resistance plan an attack. It's pointless. We outnumber you thousands to one."

Finn shrugs, not because Kylo is wrong, but because he's not the one who'll be working in Command to figure out how to pull out a victory from those impossible odds. "You'd think the First Order would have wiped us out already if it was that easy."

"I'm biding my time." He says it like he thinks he's maintaining an aloof, dignified air. He sounds like a narfblatt.

Finn feels a tight smile on his face. "I remember being afraid of you. You were one of the scariest things about working on the _Finalizer_. No one wanted to go near you. Everyone had a theory about what was under your creepy helmet. I had five credits on a standing bet with Slip that you weren't even human. Turns out you're not scary. You're just scared. And I'm not afraid of you any more."

Time drags by. A few times, each one starts as if to say something, then breaks off, looking somewhere else. Finn doesn't want to chat. It's bad enough finding out his mortal enemy was also his first (second, third, and last) lay, and that said enemy is as angry about Finn leaving him as he is about Finn turning traitor to the cause. Who knows what else they'll dredge up between them?

He can feel his eyelids getting heavy as the hours pass. Kylo has pulled himself into a huddle, his eyes closed. Maybe he's meditating. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he's taking a nap.

Finn stands up and starts pacing. This planet's day and night cycles either stretch longer than he thought, or the planet is tidal-locked to its star. They landed at twilight, which has neither grown brighter nor dimmed into darkness. There's a chill in his hands and feet which a little stomping works out. He needs to get his blood moving. He needs to stay awake until rescue arrives.

He starts singing. It's a stolid old ditty, one the rest of his squad knew. Finn doesn't have the best singing voice, but it's loud and it wakes him up. Kylo opens his eyes and glares. "Do you have to do that?"

"Just getting into the spirit of things." He clears his throat and starts a new one. Poe and Rose taught him this one, complete with the filthy lyrics that made Finn laugh in embarrassment the first time he'd tried singing it. The tune is all right, but he misses Rose's descriptive gestures and Poe's attempts to make up even dirtier verses as they go. Rey made the best face the time the three of them had piled out of the _Falcon_ 's cockpit still singing.

He expects Kylo to make the same shocked face. Instead, he's mouthing the words. Finn stops instantly.

"You know this one?"

"It's an old Rebellion song. It was probably old during the Clone War." Unexpectedly, he launches into a raunchy verse of his own, which sounds a lot like one of Poe's. His singing voice isn't great, either, but it breaks the mood. They start one-upping each other, coming up with worse and worse lyrics. It's terrible and Finn's not sure why he's smiling so hard.

"You should join us," he says to Kylo when they're both too out of breath and out of inspiration. "You could give Poe a run for the worst singing in the fleet."

It's a step too far. Kylo pulls back into the harsh look inside his eyes. They're not friends on patrol. He is the nominal leader of the enemy, and Finn's prisoner. When they return to the Resistance, there's a strong chance he'll be shot, and an outside chance his own mother will pull the trigger. Finn should save her from that awful duty. He can. He's still got his blaster.

Kylo can't read his mind but Finn is sure he sees the thoughts fly over his face.

"You were trained to use it. So use it."

"You keep trying to talk me into killing you. I'm not going to do it. I'm not you. I'm better than you."

There's a long moment, and Kylo huddles up away from him again. Finn isn't sure if he really hears the words, "I know."

The rescue team won't be here for ages. Finn starts singing again until his voice cracks. He sips some water and offers a drink to his prisoner, who ignores him. "Your loss."

He's tired. He can feel the lingering muscle pain from the crash, and a headache he's been trying to pretend away for the last four hours. He can feel his eyelids getting heavy. A nap is a bad idea. All of this is a bad idea.

He opens his mouth to sing more, and it comes out as a yawn.

He closes his eyes for a few seconds. Later, he'll tell himself it was only a few seconds.

Finn wakes to Kylo's hands slamming him to the ground, hitting his head hard. The dull pain splits into a much bigger one. His blaster is gone. But Kylo's hands are free. How are his hands free? Finn blinks, muddled. His brain helpfully pieces together the image of his prisoner huddling in own himself, slowly untying his bonds.

There's a blaster in his face. Finn's own blaster.

He doesn't want to die like this. He refuses to beg for his life. He stares at Kylo, watching him in the half light of this eternal gloom.

"Your turn," Finn says, waiting for the shot, wondering if he'll hear the blast, if he'll see the bright light headed for the space between his eyes, if he'll feel the burn.

The blaster moves, smacking him hard in the face. Then Kylo grabs the collar of his jacket, yanking Finn up into a clumsy, messy kiss, their teeth smacking painfully together, then throwing him back against the ground.

Kylo fires.

Finn hears the sound of the stun blast an instant before he's unconscious.

He opens his eyes, and there's a face leaning over his. He shoves at it, scrambling away, but Poe's next to him, crouching down, pressing a hand against his arm. "Hey. Hey! It's okay. You're okay." His eyes look over Finn rapidly, confirming his own words before he waves off the other Resistance pilot.

Finn grabs onto Poe with one hand. The other pats himself down. His clothes aren't any more ruffled than they were, and none of his aches are new except his head.

"Hi," he says, unsteady as Poe helps him to his feet.

"What happened?" Poe asks, eyeing the broken TIE beside Finn's own crashed ship. Where it was. His ship is gone, and the TIE looks like it's been torn apart.

"He fixed it," Finn says. Repairing either ship was beyond him, but he guesses growing up poking around the guts of the _Millennium Falcon_ could give someone a lot of ideas about how to get a broken ship to take to the sky. He rubs his head. Stun headaches hurt.

Stunned. Not killed. Kylo stuck around long enough to fix the ship, and he left Finn alive when he escaped. Finn notices the collar, its clasp broken, dropped on the ground beside where he slept. Not taken away, not destroyed. Huh.

"Who fixed what?"

The tingle on his lips must be his imagination, he tells himself. He's almost certain.

"You wouldn't believe me."

* * *

end


End file.
